


What A Wonderful World This Could Be

by Smokeycut



Category: Kino no Tabi | Kino's Journey - All Media Types
Genre: AU canon - divergence, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 23:38:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13798761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smokeycut/pseuds/Smokeycut
Summary: What if Kino and Sakura had both left Sakura's home country? With both of them alive, and traveling together, Kino's life takes a different turn.





	What A Wonderful World This Could Be

Sakura gazed upwards at the clouds, watching them drift along the bright blue sky. To her, they looked almost like sheep, swimming in the ocean. The thought of such an absurdity made her giggle. She rolled over, and saw Kino laying in the grass as well, just a few feet away. From where she was laying, it seemed almost as though Kino was leaning on the earth as one would against a wall. It had only been a few days since they had left the country where she grew up, and she was already seeing so many things that she had never seen before. New kinds of flowers that sprang up from the dirt. New kinds of people, kind and gentle, or terrifying and cruel, or anything inbetween. New perspectives, both figurative and literal, such as this. Seeing the sky from the field, seeing the world's horizon on a vertical plane... 

_How strange the world is_ , she thought. _How fascinating, how peculiar, how open and free_. She sat up suddenly, and the world shifted once more before her, back to the way it often presents itself. She saw that a few flower petals had drifted through the breeze and onto her lap. They were blue, but a shade of the color that she had never seen back home. They were dark in hue, almost a royal purple, but not quite. _It could be the first new color of many_ , she realized. Just four days, and the world had already shown her so many new things. Each day, each hour, but already time was growing farther between discoveries. But not far enough. For that, Sakura was grateful. She wanted to see so much more. She smiled softly, and brushed the petals off of her dress, allowing the breeze to carry them further. 

"Kino?" she called over to her guardian. 

"Hm?" 

"I just realized. I never packed a change of clothes when we left..." All she had to wear was the pink dress that she had worn the day that they had left, and it was quickly staining from the dirt and grass. Traveling like this was far dirtier than the young girl had expected. 

"Ah, yeah. We didn't really have any time to grab your stuff, did we? I'm sorry about that."

"It's okay," she said. "I can get some when we find another country."

"Sounds like a plan then," Hermes chimed in. 

**********

Kino paid the shopkeep and said a quick "thank you" for the clothes, then turned to see how Sakura was doing. The young girl was staring at her reflection in the mirror and marveling at the clothes they had picked up. She was wearing an outfit not too different from what Kino wore, missing only the coat.

"You're sure about this?" Kino asked, approaching Sakura. "It's a lot different from what you wore back at home."

"Mhm. I want to look like you. You're cool," Sakura said, smiling up at her new caretaker.

"Hah, alright then. When you put it that way, I can't really say no, can I?" Kino couldn't help but smile at the young girl. Sakura had been handling herself surprisingly well since they had to leave her country suddenly. With the disaster that they had to flee from, Kino expected the little girl to struggle more, to need time to process things. What had happened would traumatize just about any child, but Sakura seemed as though there was nothing at all to process. She was, for lack of a better word, _content_ with her situation. With the fact that she would never again see her parents, or her house, or her neighbors. But it wasn't denial, either. The girl had just... adapted.

Sakura marveled at her reflection in the mirror some more, before she and Kino left to see how Hermes was doing outside, and to find somewhere they could eat dinner. According to Kino, in this country, there was a restaurant that served the best fried chicken in the world. 

"That can't be true!" She insisted, shocked at such a wild claim. "How could they know?" 

"Hm?" Kino looked down at Sakura, thought about it for a moment, and then replied. "Well, they think their food is the best because of the pride they have for their cooking. At least, that's likely to be the reason."

"But what if someone else says _their_ cooking is the best?" Sakura asked as they sat down at a table inside. "They can't both be the best."

"Why not? If both are proud of it, and both dishes have people who consider it to be their favorite, wouldn't both be the best in the eyes of those people?" Kino watched as the gears turned in Sakura's head. She considered Kino's words, and from her expression it became apparent that she saw the reason behind them.

"So you're going to order that dish then?" Kino asked.

"Sure. Will you?"

"Hm... I guess... I want to know if it's the best for either of us."

"Makes sense," Kino said, happy to see the little girl experiencing more of the world that existed outside of the bubble she had been raised in. "It's sort of like countries, isn't it?"

"Huh?"

"The way people say their food is the best in the world, it's like how people proclaim their country to be the best. Because they're the only chef to use a certain spice, or because their country has a law that no other country does. And in one person's eyes, that country is the perfect home. That fried chicken tastes better than any other. But to someone else..." Kino drifted off, thinking about a certain country in particular. One where the children were turned into adults by force, by a surgery that removed the child within them. A country that had been fled on Hermes' back, with a rider desperate to escape the horrors they had witnessed. 

"To someone else that country might be pretty scary," Sakura finished. Kino nodded, returning to the present. The rest of the meal passed in silence, as both considered the conversation with great weight. When her plate had been cleared, Sakura looked to Kino. 

"So, what do you think?" Kino asked. "Best in the world?"

"Hm... I'm not sure." Sakura propped her elbows up on the table and rested her chin in her hands. "Best so far, but I want to try more before I decide it's the best in the world."

Kino smiled warmly. "I guess we're in agreement then. So I guess that means we need to keep looking, huh?"

Sakura nodded with conviction.

**********

"Kino?"

"Yeah, Sakura?"

"What kind of country will we go to next?"

"Hm... I think I'd like to go to a country where everyone tells their own story. I like hearing them."

"That sounds nice. I want to go to country where there's a comfy bed."

"That sounds nice too!"

**Author's Note:**

> Now that you've read it... which Kino and which Sakura is this fic about? ;)


End file.
